President Biden and his aides have long asserted that ending the pandemic would revive his political fortunes, as Americans give him credit for lifting covid’s threat and begin to appreciate his other accomplishments, from climate to infrastructure.
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But the emergence of the omicron variant raises the prospect that the corner will not be decisively turned on covid for the foreseeable future, as variants continue to crop up, many Americans continue to resist vaccines and experts differ on what restrictions are necessary.
That could pose a daunting political threat to the president, whose party already faces severe head winds heading toward the midterm elections and a potentially tricky reelection battle.
Democratic midterm fears mount as policies fail to resonate with voters
“We’re never going to go back to normal. Personally, I don’t think I will ever get on a plane without wearing a mask,” said Patti Solis Doyle, a Democratic strategist who worked closely with Biden during the 2008 presidential campaign.
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Still, she argued that Biden deserves more praise for the major advances that have been made against covid. “The administration has gotten us to a place where we can do things — where we can see our family and our friends and go shopping and go to a movie and do the things that bring back normalcy into our lives,” Solis Doyle said. “I don’t think he gets enough credit for that.”
That credit continues to prove elusive. Biden’s approval ratings have dropped, a close ally lost the Virginia governor’s race, Democrats are bracing for midterm losses, and voters have been slow to reward him for his legislative successes.
The White House insists all that will change once covid is in the rear view mirror. Since omicron’s emergence in recent days, Biden has sought to deliver two at times discordant messages: that great vigilance is required and that life should proceed apace.
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The whiplash is on full display this week. As the president gave a speech Monday about the ominous new variant, he was surrounded by festive Christmas decorations, a reminder that the holiday season is in full swing as Americans nervously await more details on how dangerous omicron is, if at all.
On Tuesday, Biden traveled to Minnesota, a state that’s currently hobbled by the third-highest rate of covid infections in the country, to tout his infrastructure plan, seeking to keep a focus on his social agenda amid the new fears.
And Biden continues to maintain that life can return to a pre-pandemic calm. “I expect this not to be the new normal,” he said Monday when asked if the country should get used to the idea of new variants and occasional rounds of travel restrictions.
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But that, he said, relies on vastly higher vaccination rates, a goal that has so far eluded the administration. “I expect the new normal to be everyone ends up getting vaccinated and the booster shot,” he said, “so we reduce the number of people who aren’t protected to such a low degree that we’re not seeing the spread of these viruses.”
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To the extent Biden has struggled to get covid behind him, his allies argue that is almost entirely the fault of Republican leaders who are mounting a culture war against a safe, widely available vaccine.
Even so, they say Biden faces a challenge in pressing his long-term vision, especially his infrastructure and social spending bills, while also addressing the immediate anxieties surrounding the new variant.
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Omicron is emerging at a moment when Biden had been hoping to push the benefits of his legislative agenda. His trip on Tuesday to Rosemount, Minn., is intended to tout how the state will benefit from his infrastructure plan and includes a visit to the Dakota County Technical College alongside the state’s Democratic senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith.
The White House said Biden’s goal is to emphasize that most of the jobs created by the bipartisan infrastructure plan will not require a four-year degree. DCTC is the type of institution that will provide the training and skill development needed for those jobs, the White House says.
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Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said infrastructure is a “very important long-term investment” that will spur job creation, and Democrats should pursue an aggressive strategy to sell the plan. But he warned that the president and Democratic lawmakers also need to quickly pivot to explaining that they are relentlessly focused on the most pressing challenges.
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“We have to level with the American people and meet them where they are,” Khanna said. “People don’t measure their lives in macroeconomic statistics. They don’t measure their life by saying, ‘Where is GDP growth?’ They just have a feeling, ‘How am I doing?’ A lot of people feel anxious, and we ought to appreciate that and be straight with them.”
He added, “We need to speak to the two most immediate needs on Americans’ minds: The disruption and the threat that covid continues to cause and the challenges that Americans continue to face with higher prices and disruptions in supply chains in the economy.”
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Some of Biden’s allies said voters would not blame the president for new variants and a dragged out pandemic, saying Americans are becoming accustomed to the risks posed by covid and learning to live with them.
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“I don’t think people give him demerits because there’s an omicron variant,” said John Anzalone, one of Biden’s pollsters during his presidential campaign. “People weren’t blaming Trump for covid. They were blaming him for not having a plan to handle it.”
Biden’s schedule this week is mixture of events that highlight his covid mitigation efforts with events intended to showcase legislative and administrative victories. On Monday, he met with corporate leaders to focus attention on his efforts to ease blockades to the supply chain.
Later this week, he is scheduled to visit the National Institutes of Health, where he promises to unveil what he called a “detailed strategy” for fighting covid this winter, as more Americans spend time indoors.
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Biden said the plan, which he will roll out Thursday, will avoid major disruptions to Americans’ lives, like the shutdowns that defined the early period of the pandemic, and will instead focus on testing and increasing vaccination rates.
“People have basically made a decision to define what their new normal is,” Anzalone said. “People are just looking for information. They didn’t find it from Trump.”
Biden has also been trying to remind Americans how much more their lives were disrupted last year before vaccines were widely available and how, by comparison, conditions have improved vastly.
“A year ago, America was floundering against the first variant of covid,” Biden said Monday in an address on omicron from the Roosevelt Room. “We beat that variant significantly, and then we got hit by a far more powerful threat: the delta variant. But we took action, and now we’re seeing deaths from delta come down.”
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He added, “We will move forward now in the face of the omicron variant as well.”
Biden sought to illustrate this himself, celebrating his traditional Thanksgiving holiday on Nantucket this year with a family event that he had to cancel in 2020 because of covid restrictions.
His trip included eating indoors with his extended family at the Nantucket Tap Room and walking the cobblestone streets of the island’s historic downtown to visit shops.
He started the holiday with a note of bravado. Calling into a broadcast of the traditional Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, which was revived after a hiatus last year caused by the pandemic, Biden sounded triumphant.
“After two years, you’re back. America is back,” Biden told Al Roker, the longtime host of the event. “There’s nothing we’re unable to overcome, Al.”
But within 24 hours, the country was doomscrolling for information about omicron and Biden had announced a travel ban from southern African countries.